Brand Negotiations in Video Game Communities

Brand negotiations in Video Game Communities An exploratory study analysing community-made discourses in video game brands and how they shape the brand image Christian Möller Master’s Degree Project in Marketing and Consumption Supervisor: Benjamin Hartmann Graduate School Abstract Video games are engaging products with large followings engaging in their brands. Despite this, video game value has proven hard to research and the area is understudied (Boyle et al., 2012). During the years many games have come and gone, some being hailed by their dedicated communities while others get shunned by the gaming community (MacDonald, 2018). This tells a story that the gaming community has a very influential role in the negotiating the game brands, but this subject has received little attention in research. Therefore, this thesis provides an exploratory study on the online brand community of the video game Europa Universalis 4 with the goal to visualize the brand negotiation process taking place in its online brand community. The study identifies that consumers in the brand community actively govern the brand based on the value they derive from the game through social practices. When articulations about the game value are reproduced by a large enough part of the community, it starts to become a naturalized way of speaking about the brand, it becomes a discourse. In the studied case, the consumers first praises the brand upon release, and the almost unison heralding of the deep game experience create an evangelizing discourse, where a naturalized way of speaking about the game as a great experience is adopted in the community. After some years, the ever- increasing amount of paid-for expansions start to create a negative sentiment within the community, laying the foundations for a negative discourse of exploitation. As time goes on and more content is added, the opinions from the community about them feeling exploited grows stronger, ultimately clashing with the discourse of evangelizing, thus actively renegotiating the brand image with values from both discourses. The discourses are found to inscribe the brands with values and narratives that help consumers make sense of the brand, and the power struggle between them lets consumers make sense of what the brand stands for. The results point to the importance the community has in shaping the brand image of video games, and brand managers must be very cautious about how pricing strategies influence the brand in this setting. It also shows the role the brand community has in acting as a reactive feedback mechanism for the brand. In this setting, it is through the active scrutiny by community members that changes in the brand become enchanted in the brand image and seemingly adds to the dynamism of the brand as interface. 1 Abstract ..................................................................................................................................1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................3 Theoretical Framework ...........................................................................................................5 How Brands function and is related to cultural structures ....................................................5 Discourses ..........................................................................................................................5 Online Brand Communities ................................................................................................7 Rationalization and its effect on brands ...............................................................................8 Consumer prosumption monitoring company Rationalization .............................................9 Value and Video Games .....................................................................................................9 Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 12 Choosing Method ............................................................................................................. 12 Netnography ..................................................................................................................... 12 Discourse Analysis ........................................................................................................... 12 Study design ..................................................................................................................... 13 Quality of the Research ..................................................................................................... 13 Ethics of the Netnography................................................................................................. 14 Empirical Findings and Analysis .......................................................................................... 16 Europa Universalis 4 - Contextual Background of the game and its community ................ 16 Initial responses positioning the Europa Universalis 4 brand – The forming of an evangelizing discourse ...................................................................................................... 18 The Rationalizing effects of the Europa Universalis 4 DLC policy ................................... 21 Poor Design Decision acting as symbolic resource for the Exploitation discourse ......... 22 The clash of discourses – How the EU4 brand is actively negotiated in its community ...... 23 Summary of the Findings and Analysis ............................................................................. 26 Discussion ............................................................................................................................ 27 The effects of brand Evangelization .............................................................................. 27 Discourses being formed on consumer perceptions of Value ......................................... 28 Theoretical Implications ............................................................................................... 29 Managerial Implications ............................................................................................... 29 Future Research and Limitations ................................................................................... 29 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 31 References ............................................................................................................................ 32 2 Introduction Achieving long-term success for video game brands has been a hot topic within the gaming industry for a long time. From releasing physical sequels and expansions to popular titles, to digital expansions and content packages (Robbins, 2015), to subscription-based models (Business Wire, 2019), to micro transactions for in-game benefits and cosmetics (King & Delfabbro, 2018; Heimo et al, 2018). The list of methods to capitalize on video game brand success is long. The path to success is far from easy, as consumers many times have high demands on their products and have been known to rebel against the developers for implementing bad mechanics or poorly designed storylines (Bulik, 2012). For example, in the case of the game No Man’s Sky, an indie game that drew substantial publicity before launch, it went so far that the studio received bomb threats and heavy harassment from community members when failing to deliver the value that the players expected (MacDonald, 2018). This is far from the only example, launches of games and changes being implemented are frequently discussed and scrutinized on social media by followers of the brands. In a fan- made YouTube video called “The fall of 76” (Internet Historian, 2019), the disastrous launch of the game Fallout 76 is meticulously detailed in a 26 minutes long mockumentary that has garnered over 16 billion views. Even if these examples are not symbolic for the gaming community as a whole, it shows that online brand communities impose an influential force on brand image and the success and failure of the game. It shows the treacherous line game creators walk between being able to satisfy their customers and being able to profit from the game. As of now, video game consumption seen from a marketing perspective is an understudied area, and how the video game communities influence their brands is yet to be explored, something that this thesis aims to do. Although not applied to video game brands, substantial research has been made on online brand communities. The concept of brand communities is closely related to those of brand tribes and consumption sub-cultures, to the point that they many times are used in tandem in articles (Cova & Pace, 2006). A brand community is defined as any group of people that inhibits an interest in a specific brand and create a parallel social universe around it (Cova & Pace, 2006). They are based on a culture of consumption, meaning that the commercially produced images, texts, and objects of the brand creates a social system of practices, identities, and meanings incorporated by the members of the subculture (Kozinets, 1999). Brand communities have been found to influence how society define the brand (Nakossis, 2013; Cova & Pace, 2006), create firm value through value-adding practices (Schau et al., 2009), and enchant brands with authenticity value (Hartmann & Ostberg,

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